Enter the Desolate
by Kimi kara tegami
Summary: Rated for language and past bad things (i.e., drug use, self-mutilation, et cetera). [For Link Worshiper's 'Don't Forget Me' contest.] Duo and Heero hit a bit of a rough spot due to Duo's own mental state.


_Entry #1_

_People tell me that my handwriting is deplorable._

_Maybe it is._

_All that matters to me is that I can read it._

Duo stared at the clock in front of him for so long that his eyes became unfocused, and his vision blurred before he shook himself and returned to the book of blank pages before him.

_Not like anyone else is going to read this, right? Not even the Doc. I don't know if she would bother wanting to read it, anyway._

A fly buzzed into his ear; he shook his head vigorously to rid himself of its presence.

_There are six flies in this room. Six goddamned flies buzzing around day and night. Irritating as fuck, but what can I do about it?_

_Heero believes flypaper is cruel. Not that I agree with him, but they do raise up an ungodly smell, so I guess it just has to be a live-and-let-live situation._

_God, but I hate flies._

Heero sat down at the kitchen table at which Duo was writing. Both were silent for a while until Duo shut the leather-bound book and glanced around, searching for his forgotten cup of coffee. "Haven't seen you around much this morning," he said, his mouth poised over the lip of the cup for a moment before taking a long drink. Drawing back, he made a face. Not enough sugar; its temperature had been reduced to just above that of a block of ice.

"Nn," Heero responded, propping his head up on his fist. "I seem to be unusually tired this morning."

"How long've you been up?" Duo attempted to ignore the nastiness of another swig of coffee sliding coldly down his throat.

Heero glanced at the clock. "Eight hours."

"You've been up since four?"

A nod in the affirmative made Duo's mouth quirk into a frown.

"My head hurts like a bitch, though."

That comment made Duo smile; two things that he had changed in Heero's language since they had become an 'item' were the amount of swearing and a new, more emotional level of communication the stoic man had never bothered to use.

"Want some Tylenol?" Duo pointed at the bottle on the counter, but Heero shook his head; the action caused a drop of red and opaque liquid to fall on the table. "Is that…blood, Heero?"

The questioned, looking puzzled, touched the index finger of his right hand to it. He stared at it dumbly.

"Shit, it is."

"What's that?" Heero asked, pointing to the book.

"Who cares? You're bleeding!" Duo rummaged around amidst the scattered papers on the table for a napkin.

"Just a little scratch. Probably that cat of yours," he added with a grumble.

The cat to which Heero was referring was a scrawny grey tabby kitten that Duo had insisted upon rescuing from the local pound's Death Row approximately three months prior. Although the Japanese man had originally disliked having a cat in the house – the litter boxes that needed to be cleaned, the food and dishes lying around, the eaten bamboo and ferns – he had quickly warmed up to the little grey bundle of warmth and had even named it Yume, meaning 'dream.' He let the kitten snuggle up in the crook of his elbow or sometimes lie on top of himself and Duo at night.

"Lemme see." Heero turned his head obligingly, and the other hissed. "That's an awful lot of blood for just a little scratch." Duo pressed a napkin, one of those cheap, rough, brown ones doled out generously by fast food shops, into his lover's hand.

"Scalp wounds bleed a lot," he muttered, pushing the supplied napkin to a spot above his right temple. He pulled it away, examining the line of viscous red stuck to the piece of rough paper for a moment before replacing it. "It's been healing for a little while."

"If you've been up for so long," Duo said slowly, "how did Yume do it?"

"Maybe she did it while I was asleep, and it reopened."

"How can you reopen a cut on your scalp without knowing?"

"I'd assume I scratched it."

Duo shook his head and finished off his icy coffee, then stood to get another cup. He turned to look at Heero. "Do you want a cup of coffee?"

Heero gave a little sigh of relief, probably that the topic had been exhausted, and shook his head before removing the napkin again. "Thank you, though."

Duo made a small noise of affirmation and disappeared into the kitchen.

"So, what _is_ that book?" Heero called after him.

"Nothing, really," Duo said quietly.

"Is it for Miss…what was her name?"

"The therapist? Miss Melendez?" Duo asked, reentering the room with a steaming cup of coffee; this time he made sure he had put in enough sugar. "Yeah. She asked me to keep a record of what I was thinking."

Heero simply nodded, and they both fell into a sort of awkward silence as the other sat down. Duo sighed quietly into his cup, blowing air out of his mouth to cool it before he took his first sip. Even though he had unwittingly changed Heero's speech habits, Heero was still prone to falling silent and not picking up new conversation, even when Duo would be begging him mentally to do so. The only time Duo had tried to use the silent treatment – that had been when Heero had thrown away an old and mildewed towel that Duo had been using to dry after a shower for three years – he had lasted barely three days before he had to choose between breaking the silence or going insane without someone tangible to talk to. The first thing out of his mouth had been an apology to Heero for acting so sentimental about a towel, although he did still miss that thing sometimes.

Duo opened the leather book again, licked the tip of his pencil, and began writing again.

_Entry #2_

_Sometimes I think Heero worries too much, and sometimes I think he worries not enough. When that happens, I just worry enough for the both of us. Like now, I worry about that cut on his head. He said the cat probably did it, but come to think of it, Yume has yet to make an appearance this morning. I saw her yesterday, but that was the last..._

_Well, I trust him. I kinda have to, you know; comes with the whole boyfriend thing, I guess._

_And sometimes I realize that we have so many differences...he listens to old stuff like Springsteen and Neil Diamond (not that Springsteen is all that outdated; he still rocks), and I listen to newer stuff, heavy metal and...well, I guess the punk I listen to is kind of old, too. Eighties stuff. But Neil Diamond has been around for-fucking-ever. He listens to Bellefonte and Ray Charles and even Mozart. Not that I dislike Mozart or Beethoven or anyone like that, but that stuff is just not really my style, you know?_

_He likes onions and hates tomatoes, and I like tomatoes and hate onions._

_He likes things mild and sorta bland, and I love the spicy stuff; salsa and Mexican food and spicy Chinese. Except, sometimes he eats wasabi sauce on stuff, but that stuff is horseradish or something, and that shit is gross._

_He tried to get me to eat wasabi once on a piece of sushi. That was before we were going out, I guess. It was vegetarian sushi; I remember. It had pickled ginger and poppy seeds and good sticky rice and seaweed on the outside. He said that was how sushi is supposed to be made, with seaweed on the outside to hold everything in it. Seaweed - what did he call it...nori? Yeah, nori. Anyway, it looked pretty gross, but I had a major crush on him, so I tried it to make him happy. I smiled after I ate it, even though my sinuses were burning, but when he left to get some water, I puked my guts up in the bushes. The texture and taste really unsettled me. Give me a hamburger over sushi any day - American food rocks my world, and I will not touch another piece of sushi in my life._

Duo smiled fondly, remembering that day as clearly as if it had been yesterday. Heero had returned a little sooner than Duo had expected, and he had not had time to work his face into something other than sick. Heero had apologized, and before Duo knew it, the two of them were laughing. It had been the first time he had seen Heero completely let go and laugh until he cried.

Back in the present, Heero sighed and crumpled up the brown napkin in his hand. When he stood and turned to leave, Duo saw with satisfaction that the scratch had stopped bleeding and was clotted nicely. "Have you seen Yume around at all today?" Heero asked, turning his head to face Duo, who shook his head.

"Can't say I have. She'll turn up in the laundry basket, or something; you know her."

"Yes." He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself that she was okay.

"If you want, I can look for her," Duo offered.

"That's okay, but that's a good idea. I think I will." Heero walked out of the room, discarding the bloody napkin in the trash can on the way, and Duo could hear him calling out the kitten's name softly.

Feeling a little put out, Duo returned to the 'journal,' as Miss Melendez had referred to it. "A diary sounds too girly," she had said with a smile. "Men have journals."

He had neither liked nor appreciated that generalization.

_Speaking of seaweed brings to mind the ocean...the sea is nice to look at, but not for swimming in, definitely not. A salty death trap is all the ocean is. I remember once, when I was little, I went to the beach with Father Maxwell. Well, a few other people went, but not Sister Helen; she stayed behind with a couple of sick kids. Anyway, Father Maxwell told us to stay within sight of the beach if we were in the water and within sight of him when we were not. I dunno; I thought I could take care of myself, or something, and I swam and swam and swam, and before I knew it, my feet were not touching the sand. I ducked under, and it felt like I went down ten feet or more before I finally touched the bottom, and by then I was panicking. When I resurfaced, I spun around in circles. I could see the shore, but not Father Maxwell; all the people were little dots, like ants moving around, laughing and playing. Someone on a surfboard saw me hyperventilating and trying to stay afloat and took me back to shore, and Father Maxwell gave me a stern talking-to about following rules. He was just worried, not mad._

Heero meandered into the kitchen, the little grey kitten cradled in the crook of his elbow. "Morning," he said, and Duo smiled.

"Morning again." Duo raised his again-forgotten coffee cup to his lips and took a sip, and luckily this time it was still lukewarm rather than ice cold. "How's your head?"

Heero gave him an odd look. "My head?" he repeated, letting the kitten jump out of his arms and onto the table.

"Yes," Duo said slowly, "your head."

"I don't have a headache, if that's what you mean. I don't need a therapist. My head is fine."

Duo sighed, his flexing the fingers of his left hand on the tablecloth. "The cut on your head."

"I don't have a cut on my head." Heero yawned. "I'm going to go get some bagels from that shop up the street. You liked those, right?" He turned when Duo nodded, and there was no cut on Heero's temple. The door shut quietly in Heero's wake, and the room became unearthly still.

Duo shook his head, feeling as though he were coming to reality. He flipped through the leather book given to him by the therapist and somehow found it blank after the first entry. Scratching at the base of his braid, Duo's eyebrows knit together in confusion; he was more than certain the second entry – and there _had_ been a second entry – took quite a while to write. He remembered vividly transcribing his thoughts for almost two hours over the course of the morning and the scratch above Heero's temple. He remembered Yume being missing, Heero saying he woke at four and refusing coffee. He remembered the napkin –

Almost knocking over his chair in the rush to stand, he entered the kitchen and threw open the pantry door, searching for the napkin that was coated in thin lines of blood, sure to be right at the top of the pile of rubbish.

There was none.

Heero returned to the front door of the apartment he had come to know as 'ours.' Jabbing his key into the deadbolt, he twisted it to the right viciously. The people at the bagel shop had vexed him; he had allowed them to tread heavily on his nerves with their slow and poor service, and he felt the ravaging headache of the night prior returning slowly. His heartbeat throbbed in his temples. The midmorning sun jarred his senses, and even his thoughts seemed too loud for him. What he wanted more than anything right now was his bagel and Duo snuggled at his side, resting his head on Heero's shoulder in order to read what his fingers clacked on the keys of the laptop.

Turning the doorknob, he shoved open the door and entered the room before shoving it closed with his foot. He decided not to bother with the deadbolt and instead went straight to the kitchen, depositing the bag of bagels on the table next to Duo's half-empty coffee cup.

Heero frowned. Duo rarely went anywhere without his coffee in the morning. "Duo?" he called, leaving the dining area. He wandered down the short hallway and checked the bathroom. He found neither hide nor braid of Duo there, so he continued on towards the single bedroom. He poked his head in through the door and squinted; every light in the apartment seemed to have congregated in this one room and flipped itself on of its own accord. "Duo?"

A muffled mew came from the blankets heaped at the foot of their bed, and Yume popped her grey head up. "I wasn't talking to you, _baka neko_." He allowed his frown to deepen and his forehead to crease in worry for his lover. "Duo," he called again, beginning to retreat from the room. He let his eyes sweep the area once more, searching for any telltale sign of Duo.

In the end, it was his ear rather than his eye that caught a small, child-like whimper that sounded not unlike Yume's own. He was about to dismiss it as being generated by the kitten, but she had already traced out circles and lay down in the nest of blankets, her head on her paws and her eyes shut. She was playing victim of a catnap.

"Heero," the whimper came again, this time vaguely calling out his name.

"Duo?"

"Don't make me go to her anymore."

"Her who? Where are you?" Heero asked, searching the room again. Duo's head popped up in the space between the dresser and the bed, and his eyes were full of fright.

"Melendez. Don't make me go to her anymore," he repeated.

"I can't dictate that, Duo," Heero said quietly, edging around the door towards him. "Only she can affirm the time you're…well again."

"She's a bitch!" The accusation was barely less than a vicious snarl. "I hate her!"

"That didn't seem to be the case earlier," Heero said, trying to remain sounding as neutral as possible.

"I still fucking hate her." Duo stood and flung the leather-bound book against a far wall in a motion quicker than the eye could see.

"Why is that?"

Duo leveled his gaze with Heero's, narrowing his eyes to mere slits. Heero winced inwardly; sounding suspicious of his lover's distaste for therapy was probably the worst thing he could have done given the situation.

"Why wouldn't it be?" was answer after a long pause. Duo stormed past him and slammed the bedroom door. Moments later, Heero heard the front door shut angrily as well.

Knowing it probably was not the best thing to do and doing it anyway, Heero scrounged around for the journal that had been punished by the wall and flipped through it. Five pages in the front had been ripped out, but behind the tattered edges still stuck inside the binding he found Duo's untidy scrawl and read:

_Entry #3_

_Because this _is_ my third entry in here. The other two…Well, the first one was…I remember the first one, and I know I wrote it and…well, the stuff in the second one never happened. I mean…my memories of Heero and Father Maxwell happened, but Heero has no cut on his head…and Yume was never missing…I never really wrote the entry. It _was not there_ when I went back to look at it…_

_Either I'm going crazy, or there is something very wrong with the world…_

This was what Duo was so upset about? Heero cocked his head to the side, staring abstractly at the paper half-filled with chicken-scratch. He knew for a fact Duo had legible penmanship when he was in the mood, but when that mood became angry or frightened, even sad, it became this Greek. Duo really _was_ upset about what he had seen – or not seen – this morning. Heero sighed and let the book fall to the ground, landing open on its spine. Duo had to be found before something tragic came to be.

So Heero shrugged on his jacket, took Duo's as an afterthought, and locked the front door behind him. His breath half-solidified in the cold air around him; a cold front had come through over the night, and he remembered the gooseflesh that tracked Braille-like patterns on his arms as he returned with the bag of doughnuts. He was glad he had remembered to slide into his jacket before he left; according to last night's news, the temperature was not supposed to exceed fifty degrees farenheight, and although the sun was shining, it gave little warmth.

Heero paused at the top of the exposed stairs that led to the ground below their apartment, thinking of where exactly Duo would go being as upset as he was. He might go up to the doughnut shop Heero had visited earlier; there was a private coffee franchise across the street from that and a church next to the coffee store. Behind the church was a small park that was popular with local children and one braided, child-like man…

Heero took the stairs down two at a time. He would start at the swings.

Duo glided back and forth, crossing his legs at the ankles to keep them from brushing the gravel beneath him. With every oscillation, his heavy braid slapped between his shoulder blades, a comforting weight at the nape of his neck. He felt bad for storming out on Heero, but what could be done? What he had said was the truth: He hated Miss Melendez, if not for her stereotypes and conventionalism then for her insane reluctance to acknowledge his position as a human being.

"So I've fucked up a few times," he muttered. "Doesn't mean I need no damn shrink."

He kicked furiously at the pebbles underneath him, scattering them with his rage. They clinked against the poles that supported the jungle gym and ancient metal slide, and he growled. "What the hell is wrong with people? Everybody needs a goddamn therapist. Nobody's happy, and nobody accepts that it's their own fault, not old Uncle Dave with his nighttime visits or Daddy with a bottle in one hand and a belt in the other. Jesus H Christ." He kicked at the rocks again, more angrily this time, and they showered on the slab of metal in front of him. "I accept what I've done, so why can't they?"

He shivered. So angry was he at Heero when he ran out of the apartment that he had forgotten his coat…

"Fifty fucking below zero out here," he muttered, stopping the swing's undulation by digging his sneakers into the ground. He curled in on himself as he had learned to as a child, almost fetal in appearances.

"You haven't accepted it yet, Duo. That's why you're getting help."

Duo closed his eyes. "Go away," he gritted. He vaguely felt his teeth begin to chatter, and then a bulky warmth draped itself across his shoulders. Heero helped him to stand, and with his arms around Duo, still hunched over, they returned home.

Shaking so badly he could barely hold still, Duo clutched a cup of coffee in one hand and a pencil in the other, trying to steady himself in order to write another sentence in the blasted book. Heero thought he was asleep, bundled in blankets and body heat enough to warm an Everest climber, and that was good enough.

_Entry #4_

_I've got this song stuck in my head, mostly just this one part that reminds me a little bit of when I was younger…I don't know why._

_"I'm an ocean in your bedroom, make you feel warm, make you want to re-assume."_

_It's new, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Well, relatively new…as in, I don't have the CD yet._

_It makes me think of that time we went to the beach. Not Father Maxwell and the rest of the kids, just Heero and me. We rented a room for the weekend by the beach, and every morning, I woke up hearing nothing but Heero's breathing and the waves crashing on the shore._

_I think that was the best weekend of my life._

Duo stopped, put down his pencil. What could he possibly write that would not touch the subject he was trying to avoid? He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. What could he say that she would not take to mean something deeper and more disturbed?

With a growl, he ripped the page out of the book, crumpled it into a ball and threw it in the general vicinity of the trash bin; it ricocheted off the wall and fell a few feet away from its intended target.

In the general backlash of the war, Duo had dropped his façade of happiness and fallen into the backdrop, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible – not only to his employers, but also to his friends and the one he loved most. Many people, not including Heero and the others, of course, were too wrapped up in their own war-caused neuroses and problems with the basic structure of society to notice anything wrong with him, and Heero had chosen to remain silent until he found enough incriminating evidence against Duo's condition: four water-and bloodstained razors and a short straw, sides caked with implicating white powder. Duo remembered crying for an hour and apologizing while Heero shushed him and promised him: "It'll be okay. We'll get you help."

'Help' was not how Duo chose to refer to Miss Melendez. In his mind, he called her office 'Hell.'

Heero paced in front of the door to their shared bedroom, two steps left and three right. He stopped in front of it with an uncharacteristically worried expression on his face – he was beyond simply concerned, but slightly less than panicked about his lover's condition.

Insofar as their relationship went, this was the second instance in which Duo had worried him so terribly, which worried him even more, if that were even possible.

With a quiet sigh and a steeling of his expression, Heero rapped lightly on the bedroom door with his first two knuckles. When there was no answer, he turned the knob and poked his head into the room for the second time that day. Duo was curled into a tight ball on the bed, his hair covering the visible remainder of it. His abandoned hair tie was on the dresser next to the bed, and Yume was asleep at his side. Heero was about to turn off the light and close the door when Duo spoke.

"I'm sorry."

It was barely a whisper, but it stopped Heero. Instead of leaving, he shut the door and moved to sit on the corner of the bed. "Why?"

"Any number of reasons." The resigned, bitter murmur sounded nothing like Duo. "If not now, then when? I'm not always gonna be around to apologize."

"That's stupid," Heero said, placing a hand tentatively on his lover's shoulder. "You've nothing to apologize for."

The pile of blankets rose as Duo sighed heavily beneath it. "Yeah, but…" He threw back the blankets, twisting so that his bare torso lay flat on the mattress. His bangs were transformed from chestnut to a brown almost as dark as Heero's with sweat, although the temperature in the room was below seventy-five degrees. Trouble in his eyes, he stared directly at Heero. "I've put you through so much shit. I can't apologize enough."

"You don't need to be sorry about what you've done, Duo," Heero said with a gentle frown. "Everybody makes mistakes." At this, Duo averted his gaze to his scarred wrists.

"Mistakes like that, Heero?" he whispered. "Mistakes so major that their lover goes out of his mind trying to make things right again?"

"Duo–"

"Mistakes that make his lover pay a hundred dollars a week because he doesn't have insurance to talk to some bitch that doesn't listen?"

"Duo! Stop," Heero commanded, putting a finger to the other's lips. "Just shut up and listen to me, all right?" He took a breath and gathered his thoughts for a moment before he spoke again. "Anything is worth helping you feel better, Duo. I want you to be the same person you were. I want you to be happy."

"You can't always get what you want, can you?" The two stared at each other, one set of eyes full of anger and the other filled with sympathy.

They both jumped, startled, when the phone rang, but neither moved. It rang seven times before Duo finally looked away and said, "That's Quatre. He's the only one that'll listen to the damn phone ring that long."

Heero sighed. "I'll go get it, then," he said, and he went to search for the cordless phone.

_Entry #5_

_What is happiness? Not even Mister Webster has a real answer for it. No one does. What…maybe a glass of warm milk, or a purring kitten? Where have I heard that before…happiness is a warm puppy, or something like that._

_Fuck that. Fuck puppies. Happiness is…happiness is…_

_For me, happiness is Heero being happy. I want him to be happy. He deserves it._

"Yuy here," Heero muttered into the phone. He was sitting at the kitchen table, suddenly feeling very vexed about Duo's situation. Chewing on the cap of a pen with great enthusiasm, he listened to Quatre's distracted voice in the background on the other end of the line – Duo's guess had been correct about the call.

"Oh, Heero," Quatre finally said. "I'm sorry. Were you waiting long?"

"Not at all," he ground out around the pen cap. "How are you guys doing?"

"Well, Wufei's a bit testy right now, and Trowa's under the weather, so we're pretty much just lazing about today." Quatre's voice lowered to barely above a whisper. "Actually, that's why I called: I'm getting a bit of a case of cabin fever and was wondering if you and Duo would like to meet for coffee somewhere."

"To tell you the truth, Duo's a bit sick, as well," Heero said, throwing a glance at the hallway that led to their bedroom. He was about to suggest another time when he heard the door open and shut, and instead he said, "Hold on a moment." Covering the mouthpiece as Duo wandered into the kitchen, he repeated Quatre's offer.

"I don't want to, but you can," was the dull answer.

Feeling that, though more time by himself to brood uninterrupted was not needed but perhaps a hot bath and a nap was, Heero spoke into the receiver again. "Duo's too sick, but I'd love to meet you for coffee. When and where?"

Heero listened with the pen whose cap he had massacred and wrote on a napkin as Quatre rattled off directions to an upper crust coffee house near the middle of downtown. After that, he bid the blonde farewell with a promise to show up at the specified time and hung up the phone. Then he turned in his chair to face Duo and realized with a jolt that his lover was no longer there.

Duo sank back in the water of the bathtub, submerging his body until only his nose was visible. He was not brooding or angsting, as Heero suspected of him; in fact, he was all but luxuriating in the water, almost hotter than he could stand, and the steam that billowed in clouds off of it. With his eyes still closed against the near-scalding water, he tried not to think about Melendez, Heero, or that stupid leather-bound book…

He jerked his head out of the water with a splash when there was a loud knock on the locked bathroom door. "Duo," Heero's voice rang through, "I'm going to go meet Quatre for coffee now." He paused, then knocked again. "Duo?"

"I heard you," Duo grumbled more harshly than he had meant to do. "Have fun," he added, hoping to sound a little more cheerful.

"Thanks." There was another pause, then, "I love you, Duo."

In his silence, Duo heard Heero waiting, and then walking away with a sigh.

He fell back so that the solitary tear rolling down his face would mingle with the water. He ceded to the wave of sadness that overcame him before he climbed out of the bathtub and toweled himself dry.

_Entry #6_

_Something about him is wrong. He should be the same Heero I know and love, have for all these years, but somehow he is not. He says the same things, does the same things, but his eyes are different. He just says and does these things to confuse me – of this I am certain._

_Why am I only noticing these things now? For some reason, I am more aware now than I ever have been of his treachery. Heero has changed from the boy I met and fought with in the wars, from the man he became once they were over, from the one I love. He is Heero no longer, just as surely as Melendez is a bitch and I am a self-hating bastard._

_That leaves only one question: If Heero is no longer Heero, who is he?_

Duo toweled his hair to semi-dry and sat, chestnut locks more than a meter long slung over his shoulder, to braid it damp. When he had tied it off, he stood again and took a deep breath, stretching with his arms high over his head. He reached down for the shirt that he had discarded before his bath and at the same time grabbed his ripped up jeans and a pair of blue cotton boxers – Heero had always been fond of the times Duo had worn or, as the situation presented itself, not worn them. He had said once that the boxers lying on the floor brought out the blue in Duo's eyes. They had laughed heartily at that.

Remembering, Duo clenched his teeth and threw the undergarment across the room, where it settled on the bookshelf. Had that been a lie, too?

Not in the mood to rummage around for another pair of underwear, Duo simply pulled on his jeans, noting that at least it was not the first time he had gone without, and then shrugged on his shirt. He scraped his bangs out of his face and glanced around and began throwing things into his beaten tote bag, out of use for more than a year. In went granola bars, kept on hand for bouts of blood sugar crises caused by Duo's forgetfulness when it came to eating, two more t-shirts, a long-sleeved shirt and a sweater. He paused for a moment before tossing in his 'journal' and a ballpoint pen.

He pulled his old crucifix and jacket onto his scrawny body and grabbed his tote bag as he left the bedroom, but he stopped again in the kitchen. Then he sat, dug out the book and pen, flipped on the overhead light and began to write, the wall-clock keeping him company as he worried over transcribing his true thoughts.

"I hope Duo feels better," Quatre said with his trademark-beaming smile. "Tell him I send my best, would you?"

Heero smiled wanly. "I hope he does, too, and I'll pass it on. Give Trowa and Wufei a holler for both of us."

"I will!" the blonde called, and he waved before ducking into a car whose name Heero had yet to catch. With that, he began walking in the direction of the small apartment called 'Home.'

He was accosted by an old man begging cigarettes at a bus stop, and again by a woman asking if he had any spare change. He apologetically said no to both, and his thoughts of a deteriorating society kept him busy for the half-hour of blustery winds and fierce chills he experienced on the way home.

Finally inside the cradle of warmth of their apartment, Heero hung his scarf, an early Christmas present from Quatre, and jacket on the couch's corner and shucked off his shoes. Although he had kept his hands in his pockets for the entire walk, his fingers were still numb, and he breathed warm air onto them, rubbing skin against skin in order to make them feel again. "Duo, I'm back," he called, turning his head this way and that. The living room was the normal, expected jumble of neatness and mess, and all the lights were out; the smell of brewing coffee that had filled the apartment that morning was gone. Assuming Duo had taken his unsaid advice and gotten in a few, if not forty, winks, Heero flipped on the overhead light in the kitchen and dining room. On the table was something unexpected. With a perplexed expression on his face, Heero scooped up his lover's crucifix and the book beneath it, the one Melendez had given Duo. As he opened the book, the phone rang, but he ignored it, flipping pages until he reached the last page with writing, which seemed to be painstakingly and slowly written in a way that was not Duo's.

_Entry #7_

_Heero will be reading this eventually, I assume, so here it goes:_

_I am tired of lies, I am tired of deceit, and I am tired of being what I am not._

_I am still, however, in love with you; I just wish I could say I believed the same of you, Heero. I fail to comprehend who you have become, but you are no longer my Heero, my lover._

The answering machine picked up the call after ten rings, beeping to make its attention known. "Mister Yuy or Mister Maxwell, I am Rosalia Melendez, Duo's therapist. We had an appointment scheduled for…one o' clock this afternoon, which Duo did not show up for."

_I am leaving._

"I was just calling to make certain everything was all right and to see if he would like to reschedule our appointment."

_No one needs to look for me; with my background, I can certainly take care of myself. I guess all I really want to say is…_

_I'm sorry._

"Please return this call soon; I am concerned about Duo's well-being at this time. My number is–"

_All I ask is that you, Heero, _do not forget me.

With unfocused eyes, Heero felt around on the table until his still-numb fingers closed around the phone. He pushed the on button, and before Melendez could say anything, Heero said mechanically, "We will no longer be needing your services," and hung up the phone.

_I still love you, Heero, and I think this is the best thing to do. While I am tired of lies and deceit, I am also tired of hurting you, or worrying about hurting you. Just please…_

The phone rang again, and Heero ignored it again.

_Don't forget me._

Tilting his head back so that he faced the ceiling, Heero closed his eyes. The crucifix, still clutched in his hand, rattled its beads as he began to shake. He refused to cry, but a sensation of loss still flooded him, and in an attempt to quell the fiery wave, he slipped Duo's crucifix over his head, where the cross and Jesus rested on top of his aching heart. He kissed the figure and tucked it beneath his shirt as the answering machine picked up Rosalia Melendez once more.

"I won't."


End file.
